Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the last Afghan postal post from anti-Taliban resistance, said on Sunday he hoped to hold peace talks with the Islamic movement that seized power in Kabul a week ago but his troops were ready to fight.
“We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way ahead is through negotiations,” he told Reuters by telephone from his fortress in the Panjshir Valley of the Northwest Mountains Kabul, where he had collected the remnants of regular army units and special forces too Local militia unit.
“We don’t want a war to come out.” But he said his supporters were ready to fight if Taliban troops, so far living in Panjshir, tried to attack.
“They want to survive, they want to fight, they want to oppose the totalitarian regime.” Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of the Afghan anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, said the troops did not only come from Panjshir, who also survived against the Taliban before 2001.
“We defended the whole.” We defend the whole country in one province.
“He called for an inclusive and broad-based government in Kabul who represented all different Afghan ethnic groups and said the” totalitarian regime “should not be recognized by the international community.